Date: May 29th 2009

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/abunimah

Mr. Abbas Goes to Washington

BY ALI ABUNIMAH

May 28, 2009

If the Oval Office guest list is an indicator, President Obama is
making good on his commitment to try to revive the long-dead
Arab-Israeli peace process. On May 18 President Obama received
Israel's new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; today he met with
Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

As this process gets under way, the United States--Israel's main
arms supplier, financier and international apologist--faces huge
hurdles. It is deeply mistrusted by Palestinians and Arabs
generally, and the new administration has not done much to rebuild
trust. Obama has, like President Bush, expressed support for
Palestinian statehood, but he has made no criticisms of Israel's
bombardment of the Gaza Strip--which killed more than 1,400 people
last winter, mostly civilians--despite evidence from Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch and UN investigators of egregious
Israeli war crimes. Nor has he pressured Israel to lift the blockade
of Gaza, where 1.5 million Palestinians, the vast majority of whom
are refugees, are effectively imprisoned and deprived of basic
necessities.

Obama has told Netanyahu firmly that Israel must stop building
settlements on expropriated Palestinian land in the West Bank, but
such words have been uttered by the president's predecessors. Unless
these statements are followed by decisive action--perhaps to limit
American subsidies to Israel--there's no reason to believe the lip
service that failed in the past will suddenly be more effective.

On the Palestinian side, Obama is talking to the wrong man: more
than half of residents in the occupied territories do not consider
Abbas the "legitimate" president of the Palestinians, according to a
March survey by Fafo, a Norwegian research organization.
Eighty-seven percent want the Fatah faction, which Abbas heads, to
have new leaders.

Hamas, by contrast, emerged from Israel's attack on Gaza with
enhanced legitimacy and popularity. That attack was only the latest
of numerous efforts to topple the movement following its decisive
victory in the 2006 legislative elections. In addition to the
Israeli siege, these efforts have included a failed insurgency by
Contra-style anti-Hamas militias nominally loyal to Abbas and funded
and trained by the United States under the supervision of Lieut.
Gen. Keith Dayton. If Obama were serious about making real progress,
one of the first things he would do is ditch the Bush-era policy of
backing Palestinian puppets and lift the American veto on
reconciliation efforts aimed at creating a unified, representative
and credible Palestinian leadership.

None of these problems is entirely new, though the challenges,
having festered for years, may be tougher to deal with now.
Netanyahu did add one obstacle, however, when he came to Washington.
In accord with his anticipated strategy of delay, he insisted that
Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist as a "Jewish state"
as a condition of any peace agreement. Obama seemingly endorsed this
demand when he said, "It is in US national security interests to
assure that Israel's security as an independent Jewish state is
maintained." Israel has pressed this demand with increasing fervor
because Palestinians are on the verge of becoming the majority
population in the territory it controls. Israel wants to ensure that
any two-state solution--something that looks increasingly doubtful
even to proponents--retains a Jewish majority. This explains the
state's longstanding opposition, in defiance of international
humanitarian law, to the return of Palestinian refugees who were
expelled or fled from homes in what is now Israel.

But can Israel's demand be justified? A useful lens to examine its
claim is the fundamental legal principle that there is no right
without a remedy. If Israel has a "right to exist as a Jewish
state," then what can it legitimately do if Palestinians living
under its control "violate" this right by having "too many"
non-Jewish babies? Can Israel expel non-Jews, fine them, strip them
of citizenship or limit the number of children they can have? It is
impossible to think of a "remedy" that does not do outrageous
violence to universal human rights principles.

What if we apply Israel's claim to the United States? Because of the
rapid growth of the Latino population in the past decade, Texas and
California no longer have white majorities. Could either state
declare that it has "a right to exist as a white-majority state" and
take steps to limit the rights of non-whites? Could the United
States declare itself officially a Christian nation and force Jews,
Muslims or Hindus to pledge allegiance to a flag that bears a cross?
While such measures may appeal to a tiny number of extremists, they
would be unthinkable to anyone upholding twenty-first-century
constitutional principles.

But Israeli leaders propose precisely such odious measures. Already,
Israel bans its citizens who marry non-citizen Palestinians from
living in the country--a measure human rights activists have
compared with the anti-miscegenation laws that once existed in
Virginia and other states. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has
long advocated that the nearly 1.5 million Palestinians who are
citizens of Israel be "transferred" from the country in order to
maintain its Jewish majority.

Recently, Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party has sponsored or
supported several bills aimed at further curtailing the rights of
non-Jews. One requires all citizens, including Palestinian Muslims
and Christians, to swear allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state.
Another proposes to punish anyone who commemorates the Nakba (the
name Palestinians give to their forced dispossession in the months
before and after the state of Israel was established) with up to
three years in prison. Ironically, Lieberman is an immigrant who
moved to Israel from Moldova three decades ago, while the people he
seeks to expel and silence have lived on the land since long before
May 1948.

And as Obama continues to remind us of America's "shared values"
with Israel, another proposed bill passed its first reading in the
Knesset this week. According to the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot,
the law would prescribe "one year in prison for anyone speaking
against Israel's right to exist as a Jewish and democratic
state"--making it a thought crime to advocate that Israel should be
a democratic, nonracial state of all its citizens.

It would be sad indeed if the first African-American president of
the United States were to defend in Israel exactly the kind of
institutionalized bigotry the civil rights movement defeated in this
country, a victory that made his election possible.

Ali Abunimah is the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End
the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and the co-founder of the Electronic
Intifada website.

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